Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t just play a tough guy on screen, he lives the part.
In a YouTube confessional posted earlier today, The Terminator hero opened up about a disastrous medical procedure he survived just a few years ago. The 76-year-old action star underwent a valve replacement surgery in 2019, just months before he was set to film Terminator: Dark Fate. Unfortunately, the fairly routine operation morphed into life-saving, open-heart surgery after doctors accidentally nicked the former Governor’s heart wall, which caused internal bleeding and could have proved fatal had his doctors not acted quickly.
“I woke up and all of a sudden the doctors were in front of me saying, ‘I’m so sorry but it was unlike what we planned,’” Schwarzenegger said in the clip. “[They said] we made a mistake and poked through the heart wall and had to open me up very quickly and to save [my] life. I was really freaking out.”
The star then shared footage of his recovery process which left him humbled but more determined than ever to get back in shape. “It was a disaster. I was in the middle of a disaster,” he explained. “So now how do I get out of it? You have to shift gears. You collect yourself, shift gears and say, ‘OK, what I need to do now is I got to get out of this hospital.'”
Schwarzenegger had family and friends visit daily to help motivate him on his journey, revealing that simply walking the length of a hospital hallway proved difficult at the time. “I looked like an idiot waddling around in the hallways but the bottom line was I was getting going because the doctors said you have to exercise your lungs because if you get pneumonia you can die,” he added. Somehow, the actor was able to get his fitness back in time to shoot his sixth Terminator film just a few months later. He attributes that feat to his “positive attitude” and his “support system,” and he shared his story in the hopes it would inspire others to keep going in their own health and fitness journeys.
Watch the full video above.
(Via THR)